Bundanon Wins 2022 Sir Zelman Cowen Award for Public Architecture

Kerstin Thompson Architects has been awarded the highest honour that can be bestowed in the public architecture category of the National Australian Architecture Awards, the Sir Zelman Cowen Award for Public Architecture.

Bundanon, by Kerstin Thompson Architects, is fast becoming a “reference for the holy grail of Australian architecture”, the jury said. “Bundanon is a layered work that has been sensitively handled and respects the original vision for the estate.”

Bundanon was also awarded a national Award for Sustainable Architecture.

“Bundanon congratulates Kerstin Thompson Architects for receiving the well merited 2022 Sir Zelman Cowen Award for Public Architecture. It is an extraordinary recognition of Bundanon’s new Art Museum and Bridge for Creative Learning, which is now one of the most architecturally awarded public buildings in Australia. It is wonderful to see the public enjoying the new Art Museum, Bridge and wider site. Bushfire resilience and flood mitigation were driving forces in the architectural design of the Art Museum and Bridge. These new buildings expand public access, deepen engagement in creativity and the landscape, and position Bundanon both nationally and internationally.”—Rachel Kent CEO

When Bundanon was awarded the Sulman Prize for Public Architecture earlier this year the jury stated “Bundanon creates a new appreciation of the Boyd Estate, its history and setting by purposefully inhabiting this landscape of cultural and physical significance. Centred in the historic core of the estate, the two principal components of the project, ‘the bridge’ and the buried museum respond artfully to the primary necessities of the brief and their varied environmental and landscape demands. Boyd’s studio forms a fulcrum between these two components and the original Arthur and Yvonne Boyd Education Centre by Murcutt, Lewin and Lark.”

Embedded within the landscape, the new Bundanon Art Museum, designed by Kerstin Thompson Architects (KTA) presents a year-round program of exhibitions of modern, contemporary and First Nations art, as well as new commissions. It includes a state-of-the-art storage facility that houses and protects Bundanon’s extensive $46.5 million collection of some 4,000 items. The design is a collaboration between KTA, landscape architects Wraight Associates with Craig Burton, sustainable design engineers Atelier 10, and structural engineers Brett Wall and Phil Gardiner from WSP.

The new Art Museum and Bridge for Creative Learning opened to the public on 29 January this year and has welcomed over 35,000 visitors since. The Art Museum and Bridge are major architectural works that elegantly integrate the site with the prior heritage buildings and the Arthur and Yvonne Boyd Education Centre, opening Bundanon up as a centre for culture and learning, community engagement and appreciation of the landscape.

Bundanon is renowned for world class architecture: The Arthur and Yvonne Boyd Education Centre, by architects Glen Murcutt AO, Wendy Lewin, and Reg Lark, was awarded the Sir Zelman Cowen Award for Public Architecture and the Sulman Prize for Public Architecture in 1999; and is considered to exhibit the accomplished simplicity and resolution that characterises Murcutt’s best buildings.

“Bundanon is thrilled to have its vision recognised with the 2022 Sir Zelman Cowen Award for Public Architecture, in addition to the Sulman Prize for Public Architecture, awarded in July 2022. Bundanon’s site needed great care and respect for what was here already, which was very special, with one of the finest buildings in the country, but also a very complex cultural history.”—Kerstin Thompson

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